some tribal customs in their eelation to medicine and morals 273 



Personal Hygiene 

 Gleanliness 



Under such primitive conditions as exist among savages, only very elementary ideas 

 of personal hygiene maintain, or are necessary. Cleanliness of person and dwelling are 

 the tvyo main points which suggest themselves, and in these the Nyam-nyam and Gour 

 (unlike many of the riverain people) are very particular. 



Dress 



Their dress being of the simplest (a small loin cloth for the males and a bunch of Dress and 

 leaves for those "unconscious Eves," the women, vide Fig. 75), there is little possibility 

 of the collection of vermin (except in the hair). Their bodies they frequently wash 

 in water and the Gours in particular are fond of anointing themselves from head to 

 foot with oil which they carry in a small gourd cruse, or, by suspending a loop of 

 hippopotamus blubber around their necks, they let the exuded grease gradually trickle 

 down over their persons. 



I have already mentioned the importance of ornaments as essentials of dress 

 amongst these people, in particular the Gours. Scarring of the body too, among their 

 females, seems to hold a similar significance, and without it a woman is considered 

 certainly unconventional, perhaps hardly decent. 



A comparison between the men and women of this race is interesting in respect to 

 clothing ; the men are finely built, sleek, well covered, easy going and decidedly eifeminate, 

 wearmg beads and ornaments of a light and flimsy variety (Fig. 69). The \Nome\i, passees 

 after the age of 18 or 20, like the men, carry knives and not infrequently spears. They 

 are short and squat, deformed by lip, nose and ear mutilations, their bodies covered with 

 " ornamental" scars and laden with the most ponderous trinkets of iron (necklets, anklets 

 and bracelets, Plate XVIII., figs. 7 and 9-13). Their appearance is Amazonian, therefore, 

 and hideous in the extreme. 



When among such people, one realises the enormous blessing of ample clothing to 

 hide not nakedness but ugliness. Very little sufiices to mark the difference between mere 

 decency and indecency so-called — a distinction which varies so widely according to 

 place and circumstance. The Dinka virgin, for instance, considers it indelicate to wear 

 any covering whatever. 



Diet 



The ordinary diet of the Nyani-nyaiii and Gour is of the plainest and coarsest 

 variety, a factor which contributes largely towards the excellence of their teeth. Millet 

 (Dura) is the staple food, a couple of handfuls eaten raw or crushed and boiled with 

 a piece of raw hide, to give it flavour, or ground and mixed with sim-sim oil to form 

 Mullah, will suffice them for the day. 



Meat. Meat, however, is for them one of those "luxuries of life which are its only Voracity of the 

 necessities," eaten raw, or cooked, fresh or decomposed, flesh, fat and viscera, nothing comes ^'yam-nyam 



as meat-eaters 



amiss. The onomatopajic significance of the name Nyam-nyam has already been referred 

 to. It is not ill-merited. Their orgies over the decaying carcases of animals where the 

 jackal and vulture have to be driven away to make place for the superior animal, man, 

 are indescribable. The like have been recorded by the ancient Egyptians during their 

 exile in the Sudan enforced by the Hyksos Kings. What cannot be eaten at the time 

 is cut into strips, dried or smoked as Sharmata (Pemmican) and stored in their huts. 

 Having no domesticated flocks or herds for killing purposes (owing to the prevalence of 

 tsetse), and, lindiug the trapping and liuiiting of game only possible during the tlii'oe 



